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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Slouching Towards The FUBAR Moment

A screengrab of footage claiming to show the aftermath of air strikes by a Russian plane in Tabliseh, Syria, on 30 September 2015 YouTube

DDGD – October 1, 2015

Editorial Comment: The FUBAR Moment

With new conflicts emerging on the scene in just the past
four years (Syria, Ukraine, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Yemen, etc.),
and old one rearing their ugly heads again (Darfur), with autocrats like Putin
and Rouhani showing a renewed appetite for starting wars and spreading mayhem,
and with the leaders of the free world seemingly incapable of providing an
effective response, the international order as we know it seems on the verge of
collapse. Indeed, day by day, we seem to inch ever closer to that dreaded FUBAR
Moment in regard to the Global Order. We have definitely reached it in places
like Syria and Iraq.

Mr. Putin and his acolytes, it seems are launching a Holy
War against the U.S. not terrorism. After all, Mr. Putin is allying himself
with Bashar Al-Assad, the man who chose slaughter over reform, and who have so
far killed more than 300,000 of his people, dislocated millions, and actively facilitated
the emergence of IS and other terrorist groups, both Sunni and Shia, in cooperation
with his other diehard ally: Iran.

Mr. Putin’s gambit, however, is not motivated by “the-devil-we-know”
mentality. Rather, the real issue is that Mr. Putin prefers the company of
devils. After all, he is one of them: he used overwhelming force to put down a
rebellion in Chechnya, is continuingly cracking down on civil liberties in his
country, and has shown nothing but disdain for democracy and democratic values
throughout his career. And for all his talk about respecting the importance of
respecting the national sovereignty of other countries, he never shied away
from invading other countries, and encouraging separatist movements when it
suited his narrow purposes.

Allowing for the use of such religious rhetoric, however,
might end up bringing home the very thing against which Mr. Putin is supposed
to be fighting, but is not. The fact that he is not fighting terrorism, but is
actually taking a side in what has become a sectarian quagmire, allying with
the Shia against the Sunnis, is bound to play a role in this matter as well. Indeed,
considering that Russia’s 12% Muslim communities are overwhelmingly Sunni,
Putin’s policies may not that wise on the long run. The secular mindset of most
Russia’s Muslims is not a sufficient guarantor for continued loyalty to the Russian
state. Most Russia’s Muslims come from Turkic
backgrounds, they have their own “states” within the Federation, their own separatist
tendencies, and already have a long list of grievances against ethnic Russians living
in their midst.

But for now Putin has reasons to smile, as Syrians continue
to suffer.

*

In this
article, Stephen Walt, the “realist,” “grapples with his doubts on
intervention in Syria,” only to conclude that he was right all along in
advocating nonintervention. Indeed, in this gripping piece of circular logic, Mr.
Walt starts by briefly suggesting that he might have been wrong on Syria, that
is the doubt with which he grappled, then, he proceeds to marshal reasons meant
to show that he was, in fact, right. He concludes by encouraging us to
do the same.

Mr. Walt offers nothing new here, but presenting a fresh and
nuanced take was not really the point. Rather, the point is for Mr. Walt
to show that he is an ethical man, after all, he is willing to “grapple” with his
doubts, and that his realism did not pave the path to the worst humanitarian
disaster in decades, and that he is not to blame. For all this though, it is
clear that Mr. Walt feels guilty, but, and in a typical show of intellectual conceit,
he is incapable of admitting it, as this will entail seriously questioning his
entire worldview as well. Because such major fuckups are not the result of a momentarily
slip.

*

The U.S. deliberate absence from the international scene is allowing
other powers to champion the cause of democratization, and the global war on terror.
We have already referred to one such champion above, Mr. Vladimir Putin, so it
should not any surprise that the second champion should be Iran’s President,
Mr. Hassan Rouhani, who, in his recent speech in front of the UN General
Assembly, declared:

"As we aided the establishment
of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are prepared to help bring about
democracy in Syria and also Yemen"…

With autocrats like Putin and Rouhani now pledging to fight
terror and bring democracy, and democratic leaders like Obama and Merkel, continuing
to dither and hope that conflicts resolve themselves somehow, peace and
democracy are clearly fucked.

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